FACULTY OF LAW University of Lund Master Programme in Human Rights Law Begench Ashirov Dual Nationality Acquired under Bilateral Treaties: The Case Study of the Dual Citizenship Arrangement between Russia and Turkmenistan Master thesis 20 points Prof. Ineta Ziemele Public International Law Spring 2005 - 0 - Table of Contents INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................3 PART I. THE CONCEPT OF DUAL CITIZENSHIP IN INTERNATIONAL LAW....................................................................................................................5 1. REVISITING DUAL CITIZENSHIP IN GENERAL .................................................5 2. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW ................................................................................7 2.1. Dual Citizenship in Classical Antiquity ..................................................7 2.1.1. Ancient Greece ...............................................................................7 2.1.2. Ancient Rome...............................................................................10 2.2. Middle Ages.........................................................................................13 2.3. Dual Citizenship after the Emergence of Modern Nation-States............16 3. THE REGULATION OF DUAL CITIZENSHIP IN MODERN INTERNATIONAL LAW .......................................................................................................................17 3.1. Earlier Multilateral Attempts to Regulate Dual Citizenship..................17 3.2. The Most Recent Developments Concerning the Issues of Dual Citizenship..................................................................................................21 3.2.1. The 1997 European Convention on Nationality .............................21 3.2.2. The 1999 ILC Draft Articles on Nationality of Natural Persons in Relations to the Succession of States.......................................................22 4. BILATERAL TREATIES ENCOURAGING DUAL CITIZENSHIP ...........................23 5. CONCLUDING REMARKS..............................................................................26 PART II. DUAL CITIZENSHIP ARRANGEMENT BETWEEN RUSSIA AND TURKMENISTAN ..................................................................................27 1. TOWARDS RUSSIAN-TURKMEN DUAL CITIZENSHIP .....................................27 1.1. Citizenship in the Wake of States Succession after the dissolution of the USSR..........................................................................................................27 1.1.1. The Russian Law on Citizenship of 1991.......................................29 1.1.2. Conferment of Citizenship by Turkmenistan: Law on Citizenship of 1992.......................................................................................................30 1.2. Legal Grounds for Dual Citizenship between Russia and Turkmenistan31 2. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE 1993 DUAL CITIZENSHIP AGREEMENT.............34 3. MOVES TO DISMANTLE THE DUAL CITIZENSHIP REGIME .............................36 - 1 - 3.1. Freedom of Movement from and to Turkmenistan Curtailed .................36 3.2. Assassination Attempt against the Turkmen President and Consequent “Witch-Hunt”.............................................................................................37 3.3. Niyazov Mounts an Attack on Dual Citizenship ....................................38 4. THE DUAL CITIZENSHIP AGREEMENT CANCELLED ......................................39 4.1. The Deal’s Entourage ..........................................................................39 4.2. The Protocol on Terminating the Agreement between Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation on Regulating the Issues of Dual Citizenship of 10 April 2003 ..................................................................................................40 4.3. The Decree of the President of Turkmenistan on Settling the Issues Relating to the Revocation of Dual Citizenship between Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation of 22 April 2003...........................................................41 5. A CRISIS BROKE OUT..................................................................................42 5.1. Panic and Confusion Among Dual Citizenship Holders ........................42 5.2. Russia’s First Response .......................................................................43 5.3. Russia and Turkmenistan Clinched Tightly...........................................44 6. THE ROAD TO NOWHERE.............................................................................49 6.1. The Russian-Turkmen Commission on Citizenship Matters...................49 6.2. The Turkmen Constitution Revised and Amended .................................49 7. STALEMATE: IS THERE STILL DUAL CITIZENSHIP BETWEEN RUSSIA AND TURKMENISTAN? ............................................................................................51 PART III. DUAL CITIZENSHIP CONTROVERSY BETWEEN RUSSIAN AND TURKMENISTAN IN LIGHT OF APPLICABLE RULES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW ................................................................................53 1. INTERNATIONAL TREATIES AS LIMITATIONS ON THE STATES’ SOVEREIGNTY IN CITIZENSHIP MATTERS................................................................................53 2. THE RUSSIAN-TURKMEN INSTITUTIONALIZED DUAL CITIZENSHIP AND THE LAW OF TREATIES...........................................................................................55 3. THE RUSSIAN-TURKMEN INSTITUTIONALIZED DUAL CITIZENSHIP AND DIPLOMATIC PROTECTION...............................................................................58 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................62 REFERENCES...................................................................................................63 - 2 - Introduction On 10 April 2003, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the President of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, met in Moscow and reached an accord which soon led to a heated debate over the status of the ethnic Russian community in Turkmenistan and badly frayed Russian- Turkmen relations. That day the Presidents signed a Protocol on Terminating the Agreement between Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation on Regulating the Issues of Dual Citizenship. The Dual Citizenship Agreement that had been in effect since December 1993 provided for the right of citizens of one state party to take, without losing their citizenship, the citizenship of the other party and charged equally both states with the defense and protection of dual citizens’ rights and freedoms. The latter arrangement in the Agreement was obviously the key proviso for Russia’s efforts to protect those Russians who had found themselves in Turkmenistan after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Thus, it could be argued that for a decade the Agreement had been a rather effective tool for the Kremlin to exert its influence on the regime in power in Turkmenistan and to push its agenda in the country through the periodic expression of its concerns about the ill-treatment of local Russians. Nevertheless the Dual Citizenship Agreement was terminated. The readiness of the Turkmen autocratic ruler Niyazov, who presides over the country notoriously known as one of the most repressive and closed in the world, to repeal the Agreement in order to elude being controlled from the outside and tighten his iron grip of the entire society is quite understandable. Yet, reasons of why the Russian leadership appeared to be willing to give it up are not so easy to figure out. Why was Russia prompted to sacrifice an estimated 100,000 of dual-citizenship holders and deprive them of an opportunity to assert their rights in the lawless society of Turkmenistan? To shed some light upon the Russian stance in this regard, it is worth mentioning that along with terminating the Dual Citizenship Agreement on 10 April, a major 25-year contract on natural gas supplies from Turkmenistan to Russia was concluded on hugely advantageous terms for Russia that gave rise to severe criticism of Putin about the perceived “people-for-gas” trade-off. The analysis can be complicated further by pointing to the fact that on the same day Putin and Niyazov also signed another remarkable document, an agreement on security cooperation. This agreement, which was done in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq and seizure of Baghdad by US troops on 9 April, could be viewed as an attempt, on the one hand, by Russia to counteract growing US assertiveness in the region and, on the other, by Niyazov’s regime to get an extra guarantee of its viability. However, did the economic and geopolitical gains, if any, acquired by Russia outweigh the misfortune suffered by the Russian minority in Turkmenistan? The answer to this question seems to be highly speculative and subjective, nevertheless some rationale must be found. Given the above stated, it is possible to say that the agreements of 10 April constitute a complex deal, involving the issues of human rights, energy politics, and regional security, which consequences are still uncertain - 3 - and go definitely beyond the context of pure Russian-Turkmen bilateral relations and will continue in the future. No doubt, it will not be possible to cover all these fascinating topics in this work; rather the focus of the thesis will be on the Dual Citizenship Agreement’s “life-cycle,” reasons for its conclusion